Pushpit

That's is easier to resolve. You will find that there are some tables where the diners always eat early, or indeed late. So long as you quickly work out who they are (and the elderly tend to be the early and consistent to dine as a not-always-correct stereotype) then you can see if you get the table near them but come in at another time. To give an example, some couples always want to be ready for the first show in Royal Court, or want to be ready for the first Queens Room dance, they are going to be sat down around 6pm and will be out well before 8pm. If you talk to the Maître d', s/he will be totally and professionally aware of this sort of thing and will find a table that works for you. As a hint, many people ask for a window table, though in QM2 the view isn't exactly amazing, so wanting a table away from the window may also do the trick. But so long as you articulate your preferences to the Maître d' then all will be well. At anyone time QG in QM2 is never more than half full and usually a lot less.

All the pools are heated to 28c to 30c. The Pavilion Pool (Deck 12) will feel a lot warmer since it will almost certainly be enclosed on that trip unless there is a heat wave, so the air above the pool will be ambient. But the longest pool, also heated, is the outdoor Terrace pool on deck 8, which is 8.5 metres long, a metre longer than Pavilion, and slightly wider. It will typically feel a lot colder since your head will be feeling the outside air temperature. The pools are open from 7 am. If the weather isn't good then there is a good chance that Terrace will have no other users until mid morning. If the weather really is poor (winds, heavy waves) then they close off the Terrace pool fairly readily, but that's unusual for Pavilion, I've only seen Pavilion closed once.

The hotel service charge can be removed by going to the purser's desk on embarkation. The service charge is shared with people that you may not meet but who make your trip enjoyable, such as the person washing up your meal dishes and cleaning the common areas of the ship.

I have seen people approached in Commodore Club about their dress standard in the last 6 months. Once on QM2 - which was a bit harsh since it was an Optional Gala night given a percentage of passengers were disembarking. And once in QV, that was a simple misunderstanding in that the passenger hadn't realised that it had tripped past 18:00 hrs a few minutes previously. In both cases the Cunard staff were very quiet and discreet about it, but the message was clear.

Most people would get an ESTA straight away - matter of hours, so this is done by robotics. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 days, they sometimes need to research some people's applications. So in theory leaving it until late makes sense, since you can use the ESTA for perhaps a later trip. There is an argument for applying a few months beforehand if you suspect it may be problematic (e.g. a run in with the law, or a visit to one of the USA's enemy states) since if you are one of the very rare people to be declined, you may still have time to get a visa instead of an ESTA. This is currently about 5 weeks for London, somewhat less at Belfast. So perhaps 2 months beforehand?

What I suggest you do is get chatting to some of your guests at dinner and elsewhere, and see if you can get 4 people together to take a Uber or taxi to Winchester. It's probably Ok to get a train back. The Uber rate today is £25 to £30, so per person that's cost effective. And I would be a fan of using the train to Southampton, virtually all my Southampton arrivals and departures involve a train at some point, even if it is only to Southampton Airport. Normally a TA going on to HAM will allow the first people off at 07:00 hrs or so.

The other factor to bear in mind is that if buying on a daily basis, this gives precisely 24 hours of service to the minute. It ignores time zone changes, so that can be 23 or 25 hours by the clock. So one thing you can do is say buy the package 11:00 hrs on morning 1, this runs out 11:00 hrs on morning 2. Then have a few hours offline, do all the things Cunard offers, and then go back online at say 16:00 hrs on afternoon 2. Rinse and repeat and you'll probably only need 3 daily purchases to cover 5 or 6 days, even more so if you have port days where there may be other options.

A soap sud is somewhere between a spare soap molecule that hasn't attached to grease, fat, sugar, protein - and a marketing tool for Unilever and Co. At the start of the wash it's fine to have lots of suds, but if they are still around at the half way point, then you're right, it's too much soap which does more harm than good. Note that the instructions indicate the sheet should go in first, then the clothes - I bet most people do it the other way around. The water comes from the drum mechanism so having the sheet on the drum helps it to dissolve fast, and you want that, rather than dissolving slowly and inconsistently in the middle of clothes. It's so counter intuitive that I usually forget that too, and I'm supposed to be a scientist so I've got no excuse.

I didn't have to register for my workshop, and the way it was run meant that they could scale up the number of participants quite easily.

Yes, you can do this. Even those who leave out luggage usually have at least an overnight bag with them and so it's not a big difference between the two groups of passengers. If you ask for Fast Track they will let you off first, and way too early for the coach service, but you can just go at a sensible / advertised time for the coach service if you don't want to be hanging around outside for long.

I think there is a note up on Cunard ships to the effect that they prefer people to use their supplied brand, which is presumably why it's free of charge. It's something to do with environmental factors with waste water, which has to be stored onboard for some time. Microplastics do bad things to grease over time. On QE, QV and QM2 it is this brand: And on QA it's just a left in a stack, I guess it's the same thing:

Firstly don't worry too much about the airport experience. It's pretty much impossible to get on the wrong flight since airport systems just don't allow it. The gates these days are highly automated. Particularly for flights to the USA where the airlines must inform the Department for Homeland Security of each and every passenger arriving into the USA, and airlines get massive fines if they make a mistake. If you feel that this is a particular medical or related condition that is causing this, then just book assistance with the airline, they will then get the airport to assist you through the process. In the case of Heathrow it's a company called Wilson James, and they can ensure you get to the right place. I've mentioned the sunflower lanyard in another context just now, but that works throughout Heathrow and I know people have had training what that entails. Moreover, if you are down as an assistance passenger, airlines will usually allow you to get a seat allocated in advance without paying a fee. BA have a special telephone line for that. Also for Heathrow to Seattle there are effectively only 3 options, BA, Virgin and Delta (and the last two are in a common business arrangement). So your flight can only be from Terminal 5 for BA, or Terminal 3, both are well signed. Various Apps, not least Heathrow's own app, will tell you about where and when to go. BA has a wayfinding app which is very good. The screen version is here (it neater on a mobile phone): https://wayfinding.maps.ba.com/departing The two BA services are BA49 and BA53, so you can give it as test run for tomorrow's flight (49 is gate A10, which is unusual, it's a bus gate, it won't normally be that). If you use it on a mobile phone it keeps track of where you are. It's a 9 hour 30 to 10 hour service, depending on aircraft type. It can be quicker depending on where the jetstream is. ESTAs can be arranged online but it's reasonably easy to do, thousands of people successfully get them every day. If you have a trusted neighbour to help you then it may be a bit easier to do. Mostly you hear the results within an hour or two.

I can't comment about Disney, but on Cunard it has to be pretty serious for that to happen. In addition to the smoking issue upthread, I've been aware of only one other couple asked to leave, for reasons I don't fully understand, and that is out of hundreds of thousand passengers that I've been on board with over the years. It's pretty rare, compared to say aircraft. In the case of Cunard there seems to be some sort of escalation process, so something like a "yellow card" letter from the company, requiring you to stop smoking (or whatever) before they go red card on a passenger. It would not happen due to some minor infraction, and certainly not if someone was unaware of something. And it won't be for the dress code, and if you keep to the buffet area and Golden Lion on Gala night that's fully within the dress code anyway. If I had to guess, apart from smoking I would suspect the two main areas for this are excessive drinking leading to a nuisance situation; and throwing trash off balconies - this gets caught on camera and Cunard takes that very, very seriously. I'm familiar with autism, both personally and as a medic. One thing for you to consider is investigating QM2. For a number of reasons - size, lack of noise, spaciousness, history, wall panels, scheduling, entertainment and insight options, it may be the sort of ship that works for you, perhaps a bit more than the other Cunard ships. Southampton for sure knows about the sunflower lanyard, and it wouldn't be a problem wearing it onboard, though I've only seen that once.

A few years ago on QV I was aware of a persistent smoker on a stateroom near me, it was an Iberia sailing. I wasn't overly bothered by it, but the people next to my stateroom were furious about this smoker and got the hotel manager on to the case. The air conditioning seemed to make matters worse. During the stop at Lisbon the smoker and companion were disembarked, I saw it happen, My steward, whilst using careful language, implied they had been kicked off for both smoking and discarding the butts into the sea but also for not being prepared to agree to some sort of letter from the hotel manager instructing them to stop. They were not much missed.

But I think we know what you would do! But rather than the crew sanding down the gangplank, it's actually OK to be in mufti outside your stateroom on gala night, it's just the main venue areas where the dress code is expected. I've also had experience of the Commodore Club being particular about this (and of an Optional Gala night at that).